Oh, yes, it’s Lady A’s night at Grammys
February 14, 2011 Filed under Ahen
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Drunken dialing paid off big time for Lady Antebellum, whose 'Need You Now' won both song and record of the year.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/awards/grammys/2011-02-13-grammy-news-story_N.htm
The Grammy Awards don’t always match up with popular tastes, and Sunday’s ceremony was a mixed bag in that regard. Voters chose Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now, radio’s most-played tune in 2010, as song and record of the year. Then they turned around and gave big awards to a couple of underdogs.
Arcade Fire’s win for album of the year for The Suburbs was one of the evening’s big surprises.
“This last year has completely changed our life,” Lady A’s Hillary Scott said in accepting the top-song award, one of five for the trio.
Jazz musician Esperanza Spalding pulled the night’s big upset, winning best new artist over multi-platinum teen sensation Justin Bieber and up-and-coming rapper Drake. Her Chamber Music Society album has sold just 31,000 copies.
Alternative-rock act Arcade Fire’s album-of-the-year win for The Suburbs was similarly surprising. It was the only nominee in the category to have sold fewer than 1 million copies.
Two rap titans battled it out through the night. Eminem went in with the most nominations, 10. But Grammy voters appeared to be in an Empire State of Mind.
Going head to head against Eminem, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ Empire won best rap song and rap/sung collaboration. Jay-Z also won duo/group rap performance for On the Next One with Swizz Beatz, Keys’ husband.
Eminem beat out Jay-Z for rap album, his fifth win in the category.
Rock guitar great Jeff Beck picked up three awards. Miranda Lambert, Train and Muse all won the first Grammys of their careers.
The show opened with a valentine message/tribute to Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, who is recuperating from an undisclosed illness at her Detroit home. After a montage of the 18-time Grammy winner’s performances on the show, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Hudson, Florence + The Machine’s Florence Welch, Yolanda Adams and Martina McBride performed a medley of seven of her hits.
Other performances highlighted contemporary acts’ ties to history. Lady Gaga’s premiere performance of Born This Way, which began with the singer encased in a translucent egg, seemed equally inspired by late-’80s Madonna, Phantom of the Opera and Egyptian mythology. Gaga also picked up awards for female pop vocal and short-form video, both for Bad Romance, and pop vocal album for The Fame Monster.
Bruno Mars, B.o.B and Janelle Monáe emphasized the timeless pop and R&B aspects of their melodies. A folk segment with Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers culminated in a hootenanny-style singalong with Bob Dylan on Maggie’s Farm.
Award kept for controversial ‘corpse photo’
August 30, 2010 Filed under Debate
By Chu Meng
The controversial news photo “Holding onto a Corpse and Demanding Money,” which won China’s top news photography prize last week, has been deemed authentic by authorities despite claims to the contrary.
The photo, taken by Zhang Yi, shows a boatman holding a rope connected to the body of a drowned university student, who remains in the water. The caption originally claimed the boatman, Wang Shouhai, demanded 36,000 yuan in payment for bringing the body to shore.
The body belonged to one of the three college students in Jingzhou, Hubei Province who drowned while trying to save two children who had fallen into the Yangtze River on October 24, 2009.
The image attracted nationwide attention when it appeared in the Shanxi-based China Business Review, and Wang suffered beatings because of it. But when the picture was awarded the silver medal at the 23rd National Photographic Art Exhibition on August 5, Yangtze University press director Li Yuquan said the photographer fabricated the photo caption and misled the public.
Li wrote on his blog that Wang was actually gesturing to people on the bank to help him pull out the corpse.
Zhang, 25, who has since resigned from his newspaper, stands by his picture. On August 18, Zhang won the Golden Lens Award – China’s top prize for photojournalists – and this past Monday the Golden Lens Award organizing committee confirmed the photo’s accuracy.
Brazil awards dam tender despite environmental protests
People from several tribes and social movements protest in front of the National Electric Energy Agency (ANEEL) in Brasilia. Brazil speedily awarded the tender for a controversial hydro-electric dam projected to be the world's third-largest, despite fierce opposition from environmentalists.
(AFP) – – Brazil speedily awarded the tender for a controversial hydro-electric dam projected to be the world’s third-largest, despite fierce opposition from environmentalists.
The government pushed ahead with the bidding process to begin construction of the giant Belo Monte dam after beating back a last-minute suspension order with a rushed appeal.
The tender was awarded to Norte Energia, a consortium led by a subsidiary of the state electricity company Electrobras, after a series of court injunctions that had blocked and unblocked the auction process.
Indigenous groups and environmental activists had earlier staged demonstrations decrying the dam as ecologically irresponsible and a threat to the livelihood of 12,000 families, most of them Brazilian Indians living on the banks of the Xingu river that would feed the facility.
“We, the indigenous, demand justice and respect,” read one placard brandished by protesters in front of the National Electric Energy Agency in Brasilia, where the tender process was held.
Around 500 activists with Greenpeace dumped three tons of manure in front of the building.
“There are other possible energy sources, such as wind power, biomass or solar,” a Greenpeace spokesman said.
Opponents of the construction said they would not be defeated by the awarding of the tender.
“We will not be discouraged, we will continue to demonstrate,” said Renata Pinheiro of the Xingu Vivo movement.
They said they planned to occupy some of the 500 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest land that Greenpeace estimates would be flooded by the dam.
